I'm not going to offer that volume here, but after listening to it almost daily for a month, I think I can safely say a few things.

This album, following his worldwide acclaim and success with "Time Out of Mind", and coming after a near-death experience, happens to be his most energetic, funny, and ambitious album in decades. "Time Out of Mind" was a haunting, furious affair, exploring themes of alienation, aging, the shadow of death, the twilight of the world, and a tenuous and tempestuous dialogue with the Divine. I wondered at the time if this would be the big finale, the triumphant and thrilling culmination of his incredible 39-year career.  It had the creepy quality of profound last words. Devastated by relationships, arguing with a god who seems far away, mourning a world that's "not dark yet, but it's getting there," Dylan still asserted hope in an everlasting peace beyond in a place called the "Highlands." He was as road-weary a traveler as they come.

Well, was I in for a surprise.  On "Love and Theft", Bob sounds invigorated, even childlike in his energy and his play. You'd have to look back to "Blonde on Blonde" for evidence of such vim and vigor. He tries on different voices, crooning in "Floater (Too Much To Ask)" and "Po' Boy", and quipping like a clever court jester in the rockabilly "Summer Days, Summer Nights".

The band backing him up hits all the right notes, leapfrogging from one tried-and-true style to the next, Charlie Sexton's lead guitars add a touch of punk to even the old bluesy numbers. Producer Daniel Lanois, who gave "Time Out of Mind" such a "holy moment" atmosphere, would not have gone the route that Dylan does here (Dylan produces this under the alias Jack Frost.) The sound is more immediate, faster, livelier, and often sounds so live that you expect the crowd to roar between verses. (The band reportedly recorded all of these songs in two weeks of inspired spontanaeity, Dylan often generating new lyrics in the next room while the band worked out the music.)

Each song gives us a different character. All of them sound like seasoned travelers.  (With a voice as rough and distinct as his, he won't be posing as a Backstreet Boy.)  It's a gallery of jaded romantics giving testimony about the world around them even as they make plain their own narrow vision or flawed perspective.

There are lovers in dangerous time ("High Water") who hit the road while the cities fall apart from economic and environmental catastrophe. It could be the world, or it could be his own body he's talking about when he remarks, "The leaves are rustlin’ in the wood, things are fallin’ off the shelves."  The reality of hard times speaks to our current tribulations: "Got nothing for you / I had nothing before/ don’t even have anything for myself anymore./ Sky full of fire, pain pouring down."

Love is not a dreamy, happy place to be either. There's a despairing, apathetic husband ("Po' Boy") who answers the door to greet his wife's lover.  There's a nasty old guy whose description of his wife isn't terribly flattering ("face like a teddy bear", and then later he's either "hunting bear" or "hunting bare", it's up to you....). Throughout the album, women are trouble, and he's "given em lots of room." But he still heralds the surpassing beauty of the beloved he addresses: all my powers of expression / my thoughts so sublime / could never you do justice in reason or rhyme

Humanity as a whole is a race of monsters, portrayed in such monstrous array that Flannery O'Connor would have approved. The world is fraught with fools, businessmen, and devils. In the opener, "Tweedledeedum and Tweedle-Dee Dee", he spins twisted tales about two mean-spirited, gluttonous brothers making their way through the world wickedly plotting and arrogantly trampling everything in their path; they might be politicians, celebrities, or salesmen: "Tweedledee is a lowdown sorry old man/Tweedledum he’ll stab you where you stand." Whatever they represent, they give us a clear picture of the way evil turns upon and destroys itself in the end.  In "High Water", he throws a jab at the idea that humankind is evolving into anything greater: "They've got Charles Darwin trapped on Highway 5 / Judge said to the officer "I want him dead or alive"…" Another character declares, "No matter who you are, man, you'll never be greater than yourself." His reply, "I don't even really care."

Those Dylan-fans and critics who presume to know where Dylan stands as a man of faith would not be able to deny the language of prophecy throughout the album. Sometimes he might be foretelling his own demise, sensing the Grim Reaper nearby.   Take these lines from "Summer Days":  "My dogs are barkin’.. there must be someone around", "I'm leavin' in the morning as soon as the dark clouds lift", "Standin' by God's river, my soul's beginning to shake/ I'm counting on you, love, to give me a break."

In "Mississippi", perhaps the album's strongest track, we get the whole picture: a man with his feet mired in a troubled world, wishing he had the willpoewr to tear himself free and be true to his convictions.  Like Leonard Cohen, he acknowledges having a hard time uprooting himself from the dangerous ground of modern society (which Cohen calls "Boogie Street.") "So many things I’ve done wrong / I stayed in Mississippi a day too long." What’s the one thing he did wrong? What was wrong about staying in Mississippi a day too long. He didn’t answer the call or go on time, and something jumped him. Maybe it was the devil in the alley. Maybe he was "dreaming he was sleeping in Rose’s bed." (Doesn’t matter who Rose is... Roses fade, and life ain't no bed of Rose's.)

The last words of "Sugar Baby" are a haunting plea. In a song where the singer gives his beloved permission to abandon him and plunge into her chosen fate, he offers one last appeal, a line from the classic spiritual "The Lonesome Road": "Look up, look up! Seek your Maker... 'fore Gabriel blows his horn."

Dylan's songs have always spoken to me of an interior dialogue with God, and not necessarily a friendly one; this album doesn't suggest any peacemaking, but it assures us, like "Highlands", of the possibility of benevolence and grace beyond these times of tribulation. Even though "summer days and summer nights are gone", he assures us, "I know a place where somethin's still goin' on."

Musically, the album is a fiery crucible of traditional American folk, country, blues, and rock, as if Dylan is intent upon compressing them into some kind of explosive the blows the wall down and gives us a whole new sound. Listen to how "High Water" combines the locomotive rock of "Cold Irons Bound" with bluegrass banjo and thundrous drums. (Has Dylan been listening to Sixteen Horsepower, or are they both heeding the same muse? ) Whatever it is, it's working.  Every time I listen I can hear the ghosts of American roots and yet I come away dazzled, like something is breaking through that I haven't heard before.